The U.S. technology sector added an estimated 11,500 new workers jobs in February, the second consecutive month of employment growth to begin 2020, an analysis by CompTIA, the leading trade association for the global information technology (IT) industry, reveals.

Across the entire U.S. economy an estimated 40,000 new core IT professionals joined the workforce.¹

The solid tech hiring numbers contributed to the increase of 273,000 jobs in nonfarm payroll employment reported today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (#jobsreport)

"With net job gains of 33,500 positions through the first two months of 2020, this is the best start to the year for the tech sector since 2017," said Tim Hebert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. "However, we must acknowledge the possibility of a hiring lull due to the uncertainty many employers are facing."

Hiring of IT services, custom software development and computer systems design professionals accounted for the majority of February jobs gains, with some 7,800 positions added. Job growth also occurred in other information services, which includes search engines and portals (+ 2,800) and computer and electronics product manufacturing (+ 1,900). Hiring in data processing, hosting and related services was unchanged from January, while telecommunications positions declined by 1,000.

The IT occupation unemployment rate for February was 2.4%, essentially unchanged from a year ago (2.3% in February 2019).

Decline in Help Wanted Ads

The number of employer job postings for core IT positions declined by an estimated 68,986 last month.

The top five in-demand positions companies were looking to fill were software and app developers (95,200 job postings), IT user support specialists (25,300), systems engineers and architects (20,500), systems analysts (19,500) and IT project managers (18,700).

At the state level, California, Texas, Virginia, New York and Florida had the most IT job openings last month in sheer numbers. The strongest month-over-month growth in job postings occurred in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Alabama.

The top five metropolitan markets for February IT job postings were New York City, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Boston and Worcester, Mass., Providence, R.I., Huntsville, Ala., and Hartford, Conn.,  recorded the highest month-over-month growth.

The top three industries seeking tech talent were professional, scientific and technical services (51,278 job postings), finance and insurance (23,566) and manufacturing (20,581).